5 things you can do with your new HP TouchPad

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You’ve just bought an HP TouchPad for $99. You have successfully clicked on the Buy Now button faster than the frenzied, fire sale horde, and you slept soundly last night in the knowledge that a juicy piece of high-technology was winging its way to your door.

In all honesty, though, you’re probably not even sure why you bought the HP TouchPad — it was simply a matter of behavioral economics. The TouchPad was $500, and now it’s $99 — how can that not be a good deal? Heck, this was the tablet that was heralded as the best non-Apple tablet — $99 must be a good deal.

But now the excitement and euphoria is starting to wear off. Now it’s starting to dawn on you that you might soon have Yet Another Gadget that sits in the corner of your room gathering dust. $99 sure is cheap, but dammit you can’t eat a TouchPad, or use it to pay your rent, or wash your clothes…

Don’t despair, however: there’s tons of things that you can do with the TouchPad.

1. Use your TouchPad as a second (or third, or fourth…) monitor

At the very least, you could prop your TouchPad up on some books (or a proper HP carry case-cum-stand) and place it alongside your current battery of monitors and laptops. You could use your TouchPad as a web browser, an IM interface, a Twitter client — and so on. Tablets are low-power devices, too, so as long as you actually use it and don’t simply leave it on your desk to impress the ladies, it won’t cost you more than a few cents a week to run.

2. Use your TouchPad as a digital photo frame or e-book reader

The hardware specification might be a little bit overkill, but the 9.7-inch IPS screen on the TouchPad is absolutely perfect for displaying your favorite snaps — or even video clips. There’s no mount on the back of a TouchPad, though, so you’d be forced to glue some kind of wall mount bracket on the back with epoxy — or you could use the aforementioned HP carry case and sit it on a table or desk.

Also, get this: the 1024 x 768 display itself costs $69 when purchased in bulk from LG — so you’re paying something in the region of $30 for the snappy Snapdragon SoC, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage… not bad.

Alternatively, $99 actually makes the TouchPad cheaper than Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader — and there’s even an Amazon Kindle app for webOS! To be fair, though, with its backlit display it’s probably fairer to compare the TouchPad with the Nook.

3. Turn your TouchPad into a throwaway old parents/young kids tablet

If you already have an iPad but you have to prise it out of the grubby fingers of your kids (or significant other) before you can use it, then consider giving them an HP TouchPad instead. WebOS has a good selection of apps and games (including Angry Birds) and a capable of web browser that supports Flash video and games. The advantage of this is that you’ve only frittered away $99 when the TouchPad is eventually dropped or dunked — and with a bit of glue and a little elbow grease, you could even turn your TouchPad into a full-blown rubberized Vinci Tab.

On the other end of the spectrum, how about equipping your parents or grandparents with a TouchPad? The on-screen keyboard is pretty good for pecking out nagging emails with a single digit — and it’s significantly fatter than the iPad, too, making it a lot easier for geriatric grabbing.

Agree with #3. My 70-something parents still use a ten-year-old desktop strictly for e-mails and web browsing. Last time I visited, I installed a cheap WiFi router, just so the kids and I could use our devices.

I figured for $99, this is something they can use at the kitchen table while having coffee.

Anonymous

LOVE this article… I snagged a 32G for $149 during the first round of the firesale and here, on new years day, I was wondering how I got caught up in the frenzy. Your post hit the nail on the head for me and gave me some great ideas like using it as an extra monitor. Minimally, I plan to also use a wall mount and stream educational videos for my infant. I wish there were more apps on the HP app store – that was one thing I didn’t check before making the purchase as I’m an Apple person and just assumed there would be better selection. Any chance of a follow up to this post? Would love to see round 2 of 5 more things you can do with your touchpad.

Ryan Brown

With ICS running very smooth and Android 4.1 coming soon to touchpad…….. Makes it the most amazing tablet you’re ever going to get for 100 bucks. The community is brimming with productivity, the only thing that isnt solid is the web cam (and its useless anyway). Im sorry but i bought mine over a year ago and haven’t booted into web os for a total of over 2hours. Soon as i was running ics its been a wonderful experience.

Quaas

I can’t download with my

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